Front page photo of Saddam in pants criticised

A legal adviser to Saddam Hussein has criticised jailers of the former Iraqi dictator for allowing half-naked pictures of him to be taken.

The pictures, taken at an undisclosed location in Iraq, appeared on the front page of The Sun today.

Pictures inside also show the 68-year-old toppled tyrant washing his clothes and asleep.

UK-based lawyer Giovanni di Stefano, who claims to represents the deposed tyrant, asked: "It can't be right, can it, that you put a man in his underpants in the paper?"

However, Graham Dudman, managing editor for the paper, said: "They are a fantastic, iconic set of news pictures that I defy any newspaper, magazine, or television station who were presented with them not to have published."

The Sun quoted US military sources as saying they had handed over the pictures "in the hope of dealing a body blow to the resistance in Iraq".

"It's over, guys. The evil days of Saddam's Ba'ath Party are never coming back - and here's the proof," the source added.

But an American military statement said the pictures might be a year old, contravened Saddam's rights as a prisoner and could have broken the Geneva Convention.

"Multi-National Forces-Iraq is disappointed at the possibility that someone responsible for the security, welfare, and detention of Saddam would take and provide these photos for public release," the statement said.

"This lapse is being aggressively investigated to determine, if possible, who took the photos, and to ensure existing procedures and directives are complied with to prevent this from happening again," it said.

The International Committee for the Red Cross, which is responsible for monitoring prisoners of war and detainees, said the photographs violated Saddam's right to privacy.

Saddam, once accustomed to gold taps and toilet seats, now spends most of his time in a single 12ft by 9ft cell, the newspaper reveals.

It reports that the sparsely-furnished room contains a small desk to write on and a pink plastic chair which he uses as a bedside table.

He is said to be watched round the clock via three CCTV cameras and even monitored when he uses the toilet.

Today's pictures were a far cry from the last time Saddam was seen publicly, when he appeared smartly-dressed in court in July.

He is facing charges ranging from the 1974 execution of religious leaders to the gassing of Kurds in Halabja in 1988 and the 1990 Kuwait invasion.

The dictator, who ruled Iraq for 24 years, was toppled from power in the US invasion of 2003.

At first he evaded capture but was eventually tracked down hiding in a hole in the ground by American troops.